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Anorak News | Pigs Might Fly

Pigs Might Fly

by | 16th, February 2006

‘AT first glance the picture on the Times’s cover page is confusing. Is that swan really nesting in the clenched jaws of a mechanical digger?

Helpfully, the caption beneath the photo tells readers that the bird is dead. It’s neither nesting nor resting. It is dead. The victim of the avian flu virus is being winched from the River Mur in Austria

The undeniable facts are that the swan is dead, swans nest on the ground and that the deadly flu is too close for comfort. Infected swans have also been found in Germany and Denmark.

The Times says that as many as 15,000 infected swans are now scattered throughout Europe.

Something needs to be done. It might be too late for the Times’s featured swan, but we can still save ourselves.

So, as the paper says, should a wild bird, swan or other, be found to be infected with the H5N1 virus, the authorities will set up a one-mile exclusion zone around it.

The aim is to protect poultry from infection. Inside the zone, poultry movement will be halted. And, strangely, poultry and pigs within the zone will be tested for the virus.

Pigs. Why pigs? Do pigs fly? There are no pictures of an airborn pig coughing and spluttering as it wings its way over the Channel, and we can only imagine it to be so.

In which case, look out. Especially when walking beneath trees and cranes where a pig is nesting…’



Posted: 16th, February 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink